Doctors are amongst the most wretched beings to walk the earth.
The last week or so I've been filling in for one of our employees who works onsite at one of our corporate contact companies. This company is a Health care management company, not an HMO or anything like that, but the manage Hospitals, ERs, Walk in Clinics, etc.
Well, on Friday, I get a call from a Doctor who's a complete ass hat on the phone, he's missed his flight. With each word, he keeps digging his hole deeper and deeper, I just wanted to tell him to shut up before he made it worse. The story goes, he left his house an hour and a half before his flight was scheduled to depart, well, as anyone who's traveled in say the last 7 years knows, that's when you should be at the airport getting ready to disrobe for the requisite probing by "Airport Security". He lives in New York City, needless to say, he got to the airport as his flight was taking off, literally. At this point he's yelling at the poor counter lady and then me on the phone wanting to know what we're going to do about it, and how they should never have let the plane go. After he says this, I hear sassy woman in the background ask him "So we should inconvenience 98 other people because you can't get to the airport on time." He replied with some retort about being a doctor, I then chose that time to remind him that his ticket had been issued 7 days prior and it would be an additional $900 to change the ticket and the company would not likely cover the additional expense due to his missing the flight. He then told me that he was going to be late for his shift at the ER and that if someone died, it would be my responsibility for not helping him. I almost hung up on him at that point, but instead told him it was not my responsibility to make sure he got to the airport on time and would he like me to change the ticket. Had I been thinking at the time, I should have offered to contact his staffing coordinator for him to advise them of the delay since the travel policy explicitly states that they are to travel the day prior to their duty day to avoid this exact situation.
Move forward to today, I get a call today at around 2:00, guess who? Mother Fucker missed his flight AGAIN! This time it was the trip home. Now how in the hell can you miss your flight on both ends of your trip?!?! For the same exact reason!?!?! But wait, there's more! This time he is yelling that he thought the time that was listed on the itinerary as the 'Departure' time was when he was supposed to arrive at the airport? Well, I manage to get him on a later flight, for a mere $450 after a second $150 change fee and walk up fare, which of course he has to tell me the whole time I'm screwing him and the company since he's going to expense the additional charges. To that I have to reply, 'Do as you feel you should, I will be forwarding a copy of your travel record to your staffing supervisor for review as well, should there be any question of what happened.' Which of course he has to tell me he's not going to ever work for the company at that hospital again, I so wanted to say, we'll you're probably not going to be working for the company period. But I didn't.
Any way, this was the high point of my day, while it was a bit of a bitch fit, it was entertaining in a sadistic kind of way.